Can Psychological Questions Help Predict Managed Lane Use?

Abstract

Managed lanes (MLs) are being used in many congested cities across the United States. While the socioeconomic characteristics of travelers, along with their trip characteristics, are commonly used to model ML choice behavior, other variables—such as psychological characteristics of travelers—may be beneficial in improving the understanding of travel behavior on MLs. Preliminary research on this possibility collected psychological data from ML users and determined that, in their psychological-construct form, psychological traits provided little benefit in creating models that accurately predicted ML use. This paper uses those data to consider further their impact on discrete choice modeling when individual psychological variables are considered in a more disaggregate fashion, thus helping to uncover the information that may be masked when these data are considered only in the psychological-construct form. Among the important conclusions are that some of the psychological questions, working in tandem with typical socioeconomic and trip characteristic variables, indeed appear to contribute to the creation of improved models of ML choice. Specifically, questions taken from the constructs measuring (a) the personal need for structure and (b) driving risk perceptions and driving style appear most promising. The questions highlighted in this paper provide direction for development of psychological questions within the transportation framework.